


Fear Night

by impossiblewanderings



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gods, Horror, Monsters, Pre-TDK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 05:08:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7701961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblewanderings/pseuds/impossiblewanderings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something dark is unleashed on Fear Night -something not even Ra's al Ghul could foresee. Many men believe themselves gods. This one is right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> The release of Suicide Squad has reignited my dormant Joker obsession. Moving some old TDK stories over from FF.net.

Time unspools on Fear Night - something shifts, groans deep down in the heathen darkness. The city above is screaming, the rank smell of fear soaking the wind - but beneath, something stirs.

A name whispered, blood spilt. Runes written in the fluids of the League of Shadows, soaking into the stained carpet - they spell _awake, arise, return_.

Ra's al Ghul lays a gloved hand on the shoulder of his volunteer. He is young, pale and skinny - at first, Ra's is worried that the amount of blood he has to give will not be enough. But he is willing, eyes red-rimmed and crazy, shivering with anticipation at the thought of serving in his master's plan.

"The world will thank us for what we do tonight."

 

 


	2. two

To restore order, sometimes one must unleash chaos.

That night, in an anonymous Narrows apartment, Ra's al Ghul sets something in motion. A plan hidden beneath a plan - no one will be able to see the forest for the trees.

Not even Bruce.

"In this time of darkness we must turn to the old gods, those who understand sacrifice."

The sacrifice is stripped, placed face-up in a circle of symbols. The cold air goose-pimples his flesh. His face is lax and smooth, like some dreaming cemetery statue. Ra's knows death never presents so calm a face. Screams rake the frigid air outside. Unseen, beneath their window, someone is assaulted. There is the dull thud of fist meeting flesh, the blood bubbling up to choke the throat. The splinter of bones against the brick.

"May He come to us now in our hour of need, and accept this sacrifice as His own."


	3. three

Ra's parts the pale flesh with ceremony, a careful slice with his short blade. The boy screams, gurgles, thrashes with pain - his followers fling themselves upon the body to prevent him smearing the summoning runes. His bare heels drum on the carpet, and his eyes film over gradually. Thankfully, with his windpipe ruptured, he can't make too much noise as he dies.

Ra's al Ghul steps back, lays the red-slicked knife reverently at the side of the corpse.

Whatever else may happen here tonight, at least this cannot be undone.

Falling, burning, skin sloughing away as the train plunges, Ra's has a moment of elation. In the corkscrewed tilt-a-whirl that is his view of his final moments, he glimpses a blaze of light stabbing out from a squat block of apartments. He expected white or red, not that bruising, storm-cloud, vicious purple. There is humour there.

He laughs, and flames lick inside his mouth.

"He is risen."


	4. four

Beside the corpse rapidly cooling on the dusty floor, an empty space is filled. A man staggering, as though unsure of his limbs, as though he has never before possessed limbs. He snags the abandoned knife in spidery fingers, drops it, falls and slices his palm on the blade.

He finds a mirror, smears blood and dust on the surface to find his reflection - dark eyes frantic behind a curtain of straggling blonde curls - brings up the knife, stretches the side of his lip, gags as he inserts the blade, and hacks until the flesh hangs in ribbons.

He repeats his name again and again in an accent thick and foreign, reaches for the other side and this time, his hand does not shake. Red arches neatly upward, flesh spitting white and red.

He carves himself a smile - and when it does not stop the flow of memories, he gouges broken nails into the side of his skull and tries to physically hold it back. But slowly, his eyes grow dull, and he sinks back on his haunches, a stranger in an empty room.

The cuts scar over before an hour passes.


	5. five

There is a drugged police officer stumbling in the alleyway, ankle shattered in the twisting blood-frenzy of the panicked streets. He limps, pain numbed by the cold and the horror, and the tiny bones crunch and grate like pieces of glass in his leg.

The shadows release the stranger, lured by the patchwork of screams and the scrawl of coloured lights from his birthing place onto the black tarmac, and they see each other at the same instant. The stranger is silent, unaffected; fear is his native water, an explosion of shards and he its epicentre. The officer, however, hacks out a scream, transfixed by the bulging red-smeared scars that bubble and writhe on the other's face. The lips peel back to reveal disfigured yellow fangs, and his bladder releases, filling the narrow strip with the stench of fresh urine.

The officer's gun clatters to the ground as he retreats wildly. He doesn't see the gutter, and his ankle grinds against it, white bone bursting through his pant leg in a spray of gore. He falls heavily, looks up to find the demon looming over him. He whimpers softly, swallowed up in the cacophony of despair which strings the night, and drowns in his own blood thrashing on the street, as though he could somehow swim the internal tide.

The stranger drops the revolver, hums disapproval deep in his throat.

_Too quick._


	6. six

Dawn dribbles its way across the sky, pale, washed-out. Clouds scud over the rising sun that shimmers like an oilslick between the sprawling buildings.

The survivors of Fear Night begin to gather, dragging themselves from the grasping shadows, blood-stained, flat-eyed. On the other side of the water, emergency crews can see their shapes, like survivors of some late-night zombie movie, and more than one shivers in the early chill.

The world has shifted during the night, tipped from beneath Gotham's feet. As the quarantine ends, the citizens attempt to regain their equilibrium, scrub the blood and brains out of the pavement, round up the crazies that have spilled out and scattered throughout the Narrows, magic away the corpses before the news crews get their footage.

They don't understand what has changed.

Somewhere, Bruce Wayne tears off his scorched armour plates - they part reluctantly from his pale flesh, like shedding a layer of skin.

Somewhere, the stranger tilts long legs up onto a splintered bar table - listening to the distant shouts and screams between slugs of whisky.

The battle lines have been drawn, and Gotham shakes itself apart under their weight.

 


End file.
